OK if we start today with a poem?
It’s by Gail Mazur and it’s called Ice. It reminded me how much I love my incredible daughter Caitlin.
In the warming house, children lace their skates,
bending, choked, over their thick jackets.
A Franklin stove keeps the place so cozy
it’s hard to imagine why anyone would leave,
clumping across the frozen beach to the river.
December’s always the same at Ware’s Cove,
the first sheer ice, black, then white
and deep until the city sends trucks of men
with wooden barriers to put up the boys’
hockey rink. An hour of skating after school,
of trying wobbly figure-8’s, an hour
of distances moved backwards without falling,
then—twilight, the warming house steamy
with girls pulling on boots, their chafed legs
aching. Outside, the hockey players keep
playing, slamming the round black puck
until it’s dark, until supper. At night,
a shy girl comes to the cove with her father.
Although there isn’t music, they glide
arm in arm onto the blurred surface together,
braced like dancers. She thinks she’ll never
be so happy, for who else will find her graceful,
find her perfect, skate with her
in circles outside the emptied rink forever?
Today’s puzzle, by Jeremy Newton, was right up Owl Chatter’s alley. Bad puns! It took Oscar-winning (for sound) movie titles and played with their names. So one clue was: “Why the Devil was forced to pay ‘The Greatest’” was HELL OWED ALI. Say it out loud: Hello Dolly! My other fave was: Bronzed NY basketball player from Bangkok.” That was THAI TAN KNICK.
That last one led one commenter to share this SNL bit that was pretty good and new to me: an interview with the (very defensive) iceberg.
(“First of all, you hit me.”)
Aside from the themers, some of the regular cluing was terrific. “Therein lies the rub” was the clue for SPA.
“End of a flight, in two senses,” was the clue for LANDING (plane and stairs).
“On display, as a painting,” was the clue for WALL HUNG. Several folks noted one small change in a crossing clue could have made it WELL HUNG. Darn! So close.
Curmudgeon Rex did not like the puzzle, which led LMS to refer to his negative writeup as a “Rexcoriation.”
The clue for ALOHA at 10D was “Greeting that means, literally, ‘love.’” LMS said she was jealous of the way other cultures greet each other. E.g., Konnichiwa (Japanese) – kinda like, “And what about today?” And Sawubona (Zulu) – “I see you and value you.”
She went on: “We get stuck with “How You Doin’?” And pray pray pray the person recognizes the question as the phatic communion that it is and not an actual inquiry into their well-being. This is especially true when running into one of Mom’s friends at the mailboxes. Safer to lead with Hey! Nice weather, huh? or How ‘bout them Panthers! than to ask how they’re doing ‘cause let me tell you, They. Will. Tell. You. After impatiently listening about their latest doctor visit, MRI, fall, rash, ache, I leave hating myself for being so indifferent to their loneliness.”
I didn’t know the word “phatic.” Here’s what the dictionary says: denoting or relating to language used for general purposes of social interaction, rather than to convey information or ask questions. Utterances such as hello, how are you? and nice morning, isn’t it? are phatic.
David Bowie’s 1983 hit LET’S DANCE was in the puzzle. Here’s a good video performance of it.
David Bowie was born David Robert Jones in London on Jan. 8, 1947 and died in NY two days after his 69th birthday in 2016. He shares his birthday with Elvis. By age 6, in nursery school, he developed a reputation as a gifted and single-minded child, and as a defiant brawler. When he was nine, his dad brought home a bunch of American 45’s, including Little Richard’s Tutti Fruitti, about which Bowie said it was like “hearing God.”
For the financiers among you, in 1997 “Bowie Bonds” were issued, the first modern example of celebrity bonds. By forfeiting 10 years worth of royalties on 287 songs, Bowie received $55 million up front from Prudential. The bonds liquidated in 2007 and the rights to the income from the songs reverted to Bowie.
In 2016, filmmaker Michael Moore wanted to use Bowie’s song Panic in Detroit for one of his films. Denied at first, Moore was given the rights after calling Bowie personally, recalling: “I’ve read stuff since his death saying that he wasn’t that political and he stayed away from politics. But that wasn’t the conversation that I had with him.”
His sexuality was fluid. Bowie was married to his first wife, Mary Angela Bassett, for ten years, and they had a son, Duncan. Bowie said “living with her is like living with a blow torch.” He was married again twelve years later to Somali-American model Iman, and they had a daughter Lexi.
You don’t need Owl Chatter to tell you how successful he was artistically and commercially. Let’s put it this way: He has a spider and an astral constellation named after him. He’s on postage stamps and local currency. There is a statue of him in Aylesbury, where Ziggy Stardust debuted.
He was cremated in New Jersey, and his ashes were scattered in a Buddhist ceremony in Bali, Indonesia.
Here’s a shot of David, Iman, and the two kids.
Owl chatter took a rare outing to the movies yesterday, to see The Banshees of Inisherin. Loved it. Very beautiful and very unusual. Four members of the cast received Oscar nominations.
Against the backdrop of the 1922-1923 Irish Civil War, the film centers on the relationship between two men. The older of the two, Colm, decides to end their friendship, and, to say the least, the younger, Padraic, has trouble understanding or accepting that. Colm concedes Padraic is “nice,” but says he’s dull and would rather spend his time devoted to his music. As the old song says, “breaking up is hard to do.”
Colin Farrell’s sister was played by Kerry Condon, whom some of you may recall from Better Call Saul, where she plays Mike’s daughter. She’s up for Best Supporting Actress in Banshees.
Born on January 9, 1983 in Thurles, in County Tipperary, Condon is Irish through and through. She has a soulful, intelligent, haunting beauty that is hard to capture in a photograph. This is the best I could do.
Here are the last two paragraphs in today’s Modern Love column in The Times. If you haven’t read it yet, it won’t ruin it for you.
“But if you lose someone you love, as I may soon lose Kevin, you will kick yourself for missing out on the five minutes you could have spent standing outside of a hospital entrance in the freezing cold among the smokers and the security guards.
“So, find the people you want to be around and be around them. Invent a ridiculous excuse to spend an afternoon in their company: Go shopping for Scotch tape, watch them buy groceries, whatever. Call the person you love most, right now, and say: I have to buy ink cartridges for my printer. Would you like to come along?”
Or invite them to read Owl Chatter with you!
See you tomorrow. Thanks for stopping by.
The Wellington Files 